Framework for an Economics of a Crowded Planet

Abstract

To serve a future large, prosperous, materially stable economy, economics needs a new way of thinking. Specifically, it needs to analyze the economy and economic processes as nested subsystems of natural processes. This chapter draws upon complexity theory and hierarchy theory to propose a theoretical framework for a future economics, in which economic and natural processes are treated as homologous, overlapping systems of agents. This ontology has far-reaching epistemological and methodological implications for an economics of the future.